found you.fell off a bit due to holidays and start of school madness.my garden looks nice, my gloria dei rose is on it's second bloom and the others are also still flowering.one hydrangea is looking a bit sad with a kind of fungus though, looks like it's covered with builder's dust.

mausmaus lots of my things had powdery mildew this year, could it be that?

I nipped to my local nursery yesterday and was surprised to see a 40 foot metal reindeer in the Car park! Does anyone else's turn into Christmas world about now? The purpose of my visit- wallflowers will be planted this morning, I also succumbed to a beautiful chocolate ivy sorry I forgot the name.

I visited our local garden centre to pick up free bulbs (courtesy of GW magazine) and was surprised to see the Christmas display already. It is still September! No reindeer in the car park though - they usually have an inflatable snowman by the entrance which never fares well if there's a strong wind.

I am waiting to go and collect my free GW bulbs. I don't know yet whether the garden centre has got its Christmas stock on sale, but the very big garden centre that's further away has already invited me to its Christmas preview, complete with live reindeer!

I agree that sounds like powdery mildew. It can get worse in drought conditions and my verbena bonariensis is covered in it.

I tend to ignore it, because I don't like to spray things with chemicals. Could you pick off the affected leaves and put them in the green waste recycling? That's what I do with anything I don't want in my compost heap.

Like maudant I just picked off the affected leaves, and didn't compost them it was lupins and Courgettes, they are still alive. Apparently you can rub 2 leaves together to get it off although that didn't work for me.

I was talking about hoopoes!! Yes funny they have long, thin curved beaks which they use to poke into the ground for worms and crests on their heads that go up and down. As I said I thought they were made up by the designers of In a Night Garden !! They were actually in our garden 3 years ago in May and I've looked ever since, I think I heard them but have n't seen them since [sad.

Sorry for getting confused about the robins. Oh and well done on the job Rhubarb.

My back lawn desperately needs weeding. I have yanked out all the things that can be removed by hand but the remainder need digging out. I realised, after I read Alys Fowler's recent article about them in the Guaradian, that the things I binned as common or garden brambles were self-seeded Japanese wiwneberries.

And (forgive me) GRRR. I have just harvested the remaining green tomatoes and discovered that dh, who has many sterling qualities but never tidies up and never throws anything away, has thrown away the paper bag I was saving for my banana ripening trick. Grrr.

Most of these would not survive in my dry shady neglected untended garden wot I never see these days now the nights are drawing in <self pity>

Actually from now till the middle of January tends to get impossibly frantic. Festivals then tax returns then festivals then birthdays then Christmas then new year then everyone back to uni means there is non stop tidying cleaning cooking shopping card writing present buying and giving and being nice to lots of people from about now onwards.

I see the attraction of being a recluse (with a garden) more and more clearly.